Collège d'Harcourt

The collège d'Harcourt in a map of 1775.

The lycée Saint-Louis was formerly known as the Collège d'Harcourt (Latin: Collegium Harcurianum).^[1] The Collège d'Harcourt was founded in 1280 by Robert and Raoul d'Harcourt to offer food and housing for around forty students from underprivileged backgrounds. Starting from its beginning, it was not only a simple student residence but also a place of teaching, this activity took more and more importance over time. During the Wars of Religion, it was a Catholic stronghold. As a result, Henri IV confiscated the college's property and dismissed its director. Once peace returned, the king reformed the teaching of the colleges: initially intended to train clerics and academics through theological studies, the college was transformed into an institution where the children of the gentry, Parisian bourgeoisie and scholarship holders from Normandy studied.

The college started to become famous in the 16th century, and great historical figures such as Racine, Boileau and Perrault attended it in the 17th and 18th centuries.

In the 18th century, it was a stronghold of Jansenists and graduated several of the philosophes and Encyclopédistes of the Enlightenment and therefore opposed the influence of the Jesuits in education, whose stronghold was located couples meter away, at the college of Clermont.

The original building was demolished in 1795 and the present one was built on its site in 1814.

In the course of the tumultuous 19th century, the lycée was successively turned by force into a prison, barracks and reformatory.

Lycée Saint-Louis

The lycée in the background on a picture from 1938 taken from the Place de la Sorbonne

In 1812, a decree of Napoleon I ordered the reopening of the Collège d'Harcourt according to the plans of J.-B. Guynet, in order to accommodate an imperial lycée. However, it was not until October 1820 that the "Collège Royal Saint-Louis" took over from the former Collège d'Harcourt, and welcomed again boarders in 1823. In 1848, following the French Revolution of 1830, it changed its name to "Lycée Saint-Louis", after being called "Lycée Monge " for several months.

The lycée is primarily devoted to the instruction of science (since 1885, the boarding school only welcomed scientific students) and in scientific classes préparatoires aux Grandes Écoles (established in 1866, the only ones present at the school since the closing of the last high school class in 1969). In 1843, a student from the school won the first prize in mathematics for the first time in the concours général. The classes préparatoires aux Grandes Écoles opened in 1866 and allowed students to take the competitive exams for the École polytechnique, the École normale supérieure (in science), Centrale, the École forestière and Saint-Cyr, and were expanded in 1885 to include preparation for the École navale.

A statue of Saint Louis stands in the middle of the central courtyard. According to an old tradition now fully integrated to the school’s folklore, students that have succeeded in getting in Polytechnique have to thank their alma mater by splashing the statue with red or yellow paint depending on whether the year is even or odd. Few days later, the statue is simply painted back white explaining why its traits have become a little bit faded over the years.